An intellectual property organization has denied a request by Glenn Beck to take down a Web site with a domain name that the talk show host claimed improperly used his name and defamed his name.

An arbitration panel for the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), an agency within the United Nations, found that Isaac Eiland-Hall registered the URL glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com as a political statement and not as a bad faith effort to profit from Beck's name.

Eiland-Hall "appears to the panel to be engaged in a parody of the style or methodology that [Eiland-Hall] appears genuinely to believe is employed by [Beck] in the provision of political commentary, and for that reason [Eiland-Hall] can be said to be making a political statement."

In a Friday letter to Beck, Eiland-Hall said he pursued the case simply as a means to "help preserve the First Amendment" and provided Beck with the username and password to his site so that Beck could remove it at his discretion.

The Web site was still live early Friday afternoon, but as of 4:30pm Eastern time, it appeared to be down.

A spokesman for Beck declined comment.

Eiland-Hall states on his Web site that Beck did not in fact rape and murder a girl in 1990, and that the URL is referencing an Internet meme as a means to poke fun at Beck's style as a talk show host.

"And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview because what I feel like saying is, sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies," Beck said to Ellison, according to court documents. "And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy. But that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way."

Eiland-Hall's Web site takes a satirical jab at that type of commentary, referencing a meme started by comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who suggested during a Comedy Central roast that fellow comedian Bob Saget had also raped and murdered a girl in 1990. Gottfried's allegation was clearly not true, which was the point of the joke.

"Why won't Glenn Beck deny these allegations?" Eiland-Hall's site reads. "We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990  in fact, we think he didn't! But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?"

Eiland-Hall's attorneys claimed that "only an abject imbecile could believe that the domain name would have any connection to" Glenn Beck. "This is the price of celebrity  you just might wind up in a meme, and you might not deserve it." But "Mr. Beck has all but begged to become the subject of a meme," they said.

Beck's lawyers claimed the URL is "confusingly similar to the Glenn Beck mark," that Eiland-Hall did not have permission to use Beck's trademarked name in his URL, that the domain name is defamatory, and that the site does not accurately convey that it is a joke.

Beck also said that Eiland-Hall came up with the parody defense after the fact and did not initially envision the site as a joke.

The WIPO panel confined its investigation to whether Eiland-Hall participated in "abusive domain name registration and use."

In order to prove abuse, Beck would need to prove that the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to his trademarked name, that Eiland-Hall had no rights or real interest in the domain when he bought it, and that he registered it in bad faith.

The panel found that the URL is, in fact, confusingly similar to Beck's trademark and that people searching for legitimate information on Beck might stumble upon this site.

On the second point, however, the panel found that Eiland-Hall had an interest in the URL for political purposes, and that he did not benefit financially from Beck's name.

"While there is some evidence that at some stage third-party vendors of goods and services critical of [Beck] may have earned some income on sales of t-shirts and bumper stickers embodying political slogans based on click-throughs from [Eiland-Hall's] Web site, the panel does not believe this is sufficient 'commercial activity' to change the balance of interests already addressed," the panel concluded.

As a result, the panel did not consider the third point about bad faith, and ruled in favor of Eiland-Hall.

Chloe Albanesius has been with PCMag.com since April 2007, most recently as Executive Editor for News and Features. Prior to that, she worked for a year covering financial IT on Wall Street for Incisive Media. From 2002 to 2005, Chloe covered technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in journalism from American University...
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